The Contrivances in Video Games Thread

[Mr. Analog]

A lot of games have little contrivances that either annoy the heck out of you or break the immersion quality the gamer experiences.

Some of these include small obstacles with infinite bounding boxes (i.e. you can't jump over a small hedge), indestructible scenery and so forth.

I started thinking about stupid stuff like this after I did a mission of GTA recently where all of a sudden there were city buses all over the place adding to the traffic. Now I think it was a lot more fun to do this mission competing for the road with city buses, but during regular game play they are strikingly absent. This was a fairly disappointing realization to an otherwise consistent sandbox game.

So what are your experiences with stuff like this, do they bug you, do you live with them? What are the worst ones you can think of and so forth.

[Thorin]

For me, it's racing games that are set in cities but that don't allow you to go off the track.  I mean, why am I not allowed to take a shortcut through an alleyway?

I understand why they used to do this in racing games, but nowadays we have the necessary CPU power and memory available to allow the player to decide where to drive, yet still roads get shut off.

[Mr. Analog]

For me, it's racing games that are set in cities but that don't allow you to go off the track.  I mean, why am I not allowed to take a shortcut through an alleyway?

I understand why they used to do this in racing games, but nowadays we have the necessary CPU power and memory available to allow the player to decide where to drive, yet still roads get shut off.

Exactly! Or having the computer "speed up" all the CPU cars so that they're always dogging you no matter how badly they were doing before.

This is yet another thing that makes no sense.

[Lazybones]

GTA traffic and pedestrians are dynamically spawned within X meters of you while out of your field of view. If you ever need a cab, just slowly spin around, new traffic will keep spawning in, note this also happens for cops. This is why often on an empty street as soon as you turn to steal a car a cop is RIGHT THERE.

If you want free form city driving you REALLY should try Burnout Paradise, it has arcade physics by the traffic and freedom to drive almost anywhere where done well.


On to my hate list:
- Barrels and Crates! Crate Review system
- power ups an weapons in odd places or in the open
- high quality textured human enemies that look EXACTLY THE SAME and not in a uniform
- keys/pass cards out in the open or unnecessarily far from the objective.
- enemies popping out of odd places on a odd trigger
- flashlights that can't stay on
- save points that are hidden or really really far apart.

[Thorin]

- Barrels and Crates! Crate Review system

ROFL

[Mr. Analog]

- save points that are hidden or really really far apart.

Oh yeah! This is a huge one for me. It killed any potential love of Japanese RPGs a while ago.

[Mr. Analog]

FLASHLIGHTS THAT DON'T STAY ON

Holy crap this. Its been nearly a decade since this thread and guess what's still a game mechanic. I've been watching streamers play spoopy Octoberween games and almost all of them use this as a game mechanic. Even flashlights you shake last longer!

[Lazybones]

Now that is a long thread resurrection..but sadly relevant.

[Thorin]

And so is the Start-to-Crate rating used in the Crate Review System...

[Mr. Analog]

And so is the Start-to-Crate rating used in the Crate Review System...

That's for sure! And don't forget; barrels are just round crates

Hard to believe the OMM guys went on to write for Valve for a decade and have since left. Time flies when you are finding stuff in crates like hats